The man at the wheel cut down on the throttle a little. “It looks as though she were trying to ram us. No, she switched off the motor. She’s going to bump. Stand by to give her a hand.”
A small anchor at the end of a line was flung from the launch to land in the cockpit of the cruiser. The masked man who was leaning forward to steady Zerna’s boat, muttered an oath. “Zerna didn’t throw that anchor. Zerna’s doubled over in the cockpit. Looks like another woman.”
They saw the woman beside Zerna stand upright, step to the edge of the cockpit, and spring to the deck of the cruiser.
“Look out!” cried one of the men. “She’s got a gun.”
“Put up your hands, gentlemen,” said Betty Dale, her voice as steady as Zerna’s gun in her hand. “Agent X taught me to shoot straight.”
Three pairs of hands stretched above three masked faces. Betty nodded her approval. “Move just a little closer together, please, so that I will have less trouble shooting you if it comes to that. I am going to signal the police.”
But Betty was watching their hands, when she should have been watching the feet of the man to her left. He braced the sole of his shoe against the anchor Betty had tossed aboard. With a suddenness that took the girl completely by surprise, he sent the anchor sliding across the deck. Betty saw it coming, tried to jump aside, tangled with the rope attached to the anchor, and fell to the deck.
They were upon her in a moment. Cruel hands wrested the gun from her. Cruel fingers shackled her wrists together. A hand clamped over her mouth.
“Now, Betty Dale,” one of the masked men whispered, “you wanted to be with Agent X. You’ll get your chance! Get that anchor and rope, one of you fellows. The girl goes over the rail, see?”
ANOTHER masked man reached for the rope and started to pull it over the rail into the cruiser. It seemed to be stuck on something. The man went to the edge of the deck, knelt to untangle the rope. But for two ticks of a watch he was unable to move.
Sticking out of the water, clinging to the rope that reached from Zerna’s launch to the cruiser, was a black, withered-looking hand. Then a black, gleaming, goggle-eyed head bobbed to the surface.
The man at the rail uttered an alarmed oath, tried to scramble backwards from the rail and at the same time drew his gun. But the black monster from the water jerked itself to their deck and rolled into the masked man. There was a frantic tangling of arms and legs. The masked man raised his gun toward the monster’s black head. But instantly that withered-looking hand clamped over the man’s wrist and turned the muzzle of the gun skyward.
The black talon of the monster from the water wrested the weapon free. His grotesque head turned slightly. His goggling eyes saw the other two masked men forcing Betty Dale back toward the rail. The monster raised the gun, fired once.
The single shot clipped one of the masked men in the leg. He tumbled to the deck. The other released the girl and stepped back toward the tiny cabin of the cruiser.
Betty Dale, from where she crouched near the rail, watched the dripping, grotesque figure herd the three masked men into the cabin of the cruiser and follow them to the hatch. The girl got to her feet and came timidly toward the strange man who had saved her. What if he had not died?
A police boat siren wailed, and the bright beam of its searchlight slit the blackness.
“Cruiser ahoy!” came the cry from the patrol boat. “What’s going on there?”
The strange man with the gun turned his head and called back: “This is Detective Sergeant Keegan of the Homicide Office. Come alongside!”
Betty’s arm, half-raised to touch the man in the strange garb, dropped limply to her side. She backed to the stern as the police cruiser swept alongside. As Keegan entered the cabin, he called out to the men getting in from the patrol boat:
“Get that girl out of that launch this cruiser is towing. It’s Zerna, the dope peddler. Some of you come in here while I talk with these mugs. Miss Dale, you stick around for a story.”
KEEGAN stepped to where the three masked men were backed against the wall. Silently he frisked them. He produced the flat leather case from the pocket of one of the men and flipped it open. He nodded his hooded head. “This is good evidence of the blackmail racket, Mr. Gordon Stien!”
The masked man thus addressed shrank back against the wall. Keegan reached out his gloved hand and pulled aside the mask that had covered Stien’s pop-eyed, chubby face.
“Just as Esler handled the field work of the gang,” he said, “Stien snapped indecent pictures of the doped victims with hidden cameras set up at Zerna’s dope parties.” Keegan handed the folder of pictures to one of the cops from the boat. “Give those to Burks.”
His goggle-covered eyes turned on Stien. “The other night at Zerna’s party, you were to be killed because Miss Dale had pointed you out as Agent X. Actually, this was not only an opportunity for you to alibi yourself, but also you knew that Agent X would never stand by and see an innocent man suffer for his own deeds. By appealing to his human qualities, you hoped to force X to reveal himself. The gas cylinder which was to be used for your ‘execution,’ contained nothing but water. You were taking no chances. Agent X discovered that and understood at once that you were associated with the gang. It was you, Stien, who were responsible for Betty Dale’s capture by the dope gang, for she trusted you. She was later drugged in an effort to extort money from Agent X.”
“But who are the other two birds?” asked a patrolman.
“One at a time,” was the reply. “The man next to Stien is Dr. Samuel Wicker. Just pull off the mask, won’t you?”
The patrolman jerked off the mask of the second of the two villains. Dr. Wicker’s jowls wobbled with wrath. “A damned lie!” he roared.
“The lying was on your side, Wicker. You pretended to cure dope addicts while you actually supplied the gang with drugs from your own pharmacy. Dope legitimately supplied to the Wicker Sanitarium for the tapering-off type of dope cure, who resold to the addicts who were victims of this gang’s scheming.
“We now have three points to a compass, do you see? Esler might represent the east; Stien, the south; Wicker, the west. I really believe that they got their idea for their clever method of communicating from the fact that their own initials could be found at the four points of the compass. Esler did the field work, Stien was chief blackmailer, and Wicker supplied the dope. But there had to be a head man. Behind that remaining mask, you will find the handsome visage of Mr. Walter Nixon!”
Nixon jerked off his own mask. His small black mustache was bristling. “All right. Let’s hear some more of that wild tale, Sergeant Keegan. And you might explain why you’re wearing that crazy garb!”
“Later, perhaps. Mr. Nixon was not a difficult person to spot. He has a strange peculiarity. Whenever a flashlight picture is taken, he twitches his shoulders as though some one had slammed him across the back. The other night, when Secret Agent X saw Nixon trying to enter the film distributing office, he tossed a simple flash bomb in Nixon’s direction. Though he did not see Nixon’s face, X noticed that peculiar twitching of the shoulders as Nixon ran down the alley.
“Then again, it was Nixon who kept thinking one jump ahead of Agent X. When Agent X made alterations in the news films in order to attempt to direct the gang into a trap, Nixon got wise almost at once. Why? Simply because Nixon himself was the man who altered those films, and he knew there was trickery somewhere. Again, when Agent X was impersonating Inspector Burks, and questioning Mr. Colrich in Nixon’s office, Nixon was the only one who could have overheard what Colrich said about Starbuck having led Mrs. Colrich astray. A moment later, when he picked up a phone call from the real Inspector Burks, he knew the Burks in his office was Agent X and that X’s next logical step would be to go to Starbuck and question him in regard to Mrs. Colrich’s murder.
“So Nixon had the wires to Starbuck’s apartment tapped, sent Zerna to do spy duty. When Agent X impersonated Starbuck, the whole gang was all set to kill Agent
X.”
Nixon sneered. “That’s very clever, but how is it that you know all this?”
“Agent X told me this before he died.”
“That’s a lie!” Nixon whipped out. He pointed a finger at the accusing figure in front of him. “I’ll tell you how he knows all that. He’s Secret Agent X. That garb he’s wearing is one of the cold protection suits our men wore—” Nixon stopped, turned deathly pale. “I mean, I—I—”
“Yeah,” said one of the cops, “we get exactly what you mean. You’ve just let yourself in for the chair and dragged your buddies right along with you. Every cop in the city knows that Mrs. Colrich and Steve Wyer were killed with liquid air. Now, you’ve just admitted the job. Maybe this guy is Agent X. We’ll take him up if he is, but that isn’t going to help you any, Nixon. If this guy is Agent X, he’s done a sweet job of rounding up a mob of worse than murderers.” The cop turned to his men. “Handcuffs for three. No, make it four. Agent X, after a job like that, I don’t care about taking you in, but duty is duty.”
NEAR the door, Betty Dale was quivering like a leaf. Was there a chance that this strange man, who wore one of the cold-killers’ fur garments with the hair singed off, was really Agent X? Could he have gotten through that wall of flame, even though that protecting garment was on fire, and plunged into the Sound?
Keegan’s harsh voice laughed at them all. “Don’t be nuts! Agent X is dead. I saw him burned. He just gave me the information, that’s all.”
Nixon gesticulated wildly with his handcuffed hands. “Take off that hood. You’ll see! He’s got his face covered with that mask to hide it. All his makeup material is gone. I threw it into the Sound myself together with his weapons.”
Hoping against hope, Betty Dale crowded her way into the group of police surrounding the man in the black garb and his three captives. The officer in charge of the patrol boat reached out and unfastened the black leather hood of the man who insisted he was Sergeant Keegan. Then he pulled off the leather mask with its thick-lensed goggles. Betty uttered a pitiful little scream and buried her face in her hands.
Sure enough, behind the mask was the face of Detective Sergeant Keegan.
Keegan grinned triumphantly at the men about him. He gestured at the three captives. “The arrest was made on your territory,” he told the cop. “You’re responsible for delivering them safely, together with the evidence. They’re dangerous. When a dope addict got to the point where he or she was of no further service to the gang, that addict was disposed of. That was why they killed Ruth Colrich. Of course, Steve Wyer was killed because he was muscling-in on the blackmail racket by sticking Colrich on the grounds of threatening to reveal Mrs. Colrich’s vice.”
Keegan started back on deck, stopped in the doorway, and added: “If you see Burks before I do, tell him I’ll deliver Mr. Esler, the fourth member of the gang tomorrow morning. I’m a little tired, and I’m sure Miss Dale is. Maybe, if she’ll let me take her back in Zerna’s launch, I can give her more details about the story she’ll write for the paper.”
“Thanks,” Betty husked. “You’re very kind.” She allowed the detective to lead her to the deck where the unconscious Zerna was stretched out. Keegan pulled Zerna’s launch near the cruiser and helped the girl in. Then he cast off and started the motor.
Betty sat silently in the cockpit beside him, looking steadily at the cruel, black water. She felt Sergeant Keegan’s arm drop about her shoulder. “Please don’t,” she said huskily. But the arm remained just where it was, pressing her a little closer. She heard Keegan’s voice talking, but she didn’t look at him. He was saying:
“It was cruel, wasn’t it, to stand there and talk about Agent X’s death.”
“You—you knew then?”
“I’ve known for a long time what Agent X thought of you, Betty. That’s why I said it was cruel to stand there and talk about his death. I couldn’t help it. You understand, don’t you? Or have you forgotten that, in a little compartment in the heel of his shoe, Secret Agent X always carries a tiny tube of makeup material big enough for an emergency disguise?
“Agent X didn’t die, Betty. The fire couldn’t quite burn through that suit of fur before he struck the water. And Agent X is quite a swimmer. He clung to the side of the cruiser long enough to remove that little tube of makeup from the compartment in his heel. Then he did a quick, but quite convincing job of making himself look like Keegan.”
“Oh, darling—” And if Betty had anything else to say, the words were lost in joyous sobs as she clung close.
The lips of Agent X were very close to her ear whispering: “Agent X couldn’t die, knowing that you were waiting for him, dear….”
In the prow of one of the patrol boats that had picked up the doped killers of the criminal crew, as well as the operatives of Agent X, Harvey Bates stood looking out across the water. The burning yacht cast ruddy reflections upon the water. Police searchlights created strange, gargantuan shadows. He was listening intently, and there was a tight feeling in his throat as he heard a weird, eerie whistle from somewhere in the darkness.
“Thank heaven!” Bates choked out. For he knew that whistle could have come from the lips of but one person. It was the mysterious musical signature of the mysterious Secret Agent himself.
The Murder Brain
Weird white crosses were splashed upon the sidewalks of a terror-ridden city. And under each cross lay a man murdered without a motive. Agent X, the man of a thousand faces, set out to meet the murder master whose face was known only to the dead.
CHAPTER I
Murder Epidemic
IT wasn’t a pleasant room. A filmy light-globe wired into an old, brass gas fixture lent a nauseous shade to the blue-kalsomined walls. An iron bedstead shed enamel as a birch tree does its bark. There was a telephone on a table of woven fiber.
At the table, a man faced the wall, oblivious to its ugliness. He pulled the phone up under his jutting chin and called Rector 2-3520 in a voice that was crisply impatient. Three fingers of his right hand tap-danced on the table top. Foley Square and the United States Court House were thirty long seconds away, even for a man with the magic of the telephone at his command.
“Jackson speaking,” said the man in the dingy room at last. “I must speak to Special Agent Weston, immediately.”
He finger-danced some more, squirmed restlessly in the hard-bottomed chair. Then his voice lashed out at the transmitter:
“Jackson to report. I leave immediately for Bedford Street to meet Agent Parker at the corner of Commerce. Another white-cross killing has been scheduled.”
G-man Henry Jackson clamped the receiver to its hook and pushed the phone away from him. As he did so, the polished metal shell of the transmitter caught a black and particularly ominous reflection. The reflection was that of a man. Either the nickel shell of the phone was distorting the image a great deal, or this man was about as large a specimen as Jackson had ever encountered.
Enormous square shoulders seemed on the point of pushing through his black coat. He wore no hat. Only his unruly black hair prevented his head from being a complete cube. His jaw resembled the foremost portion of a steamshovel. The stem of a square-bowled pipe parted the level line of his lips. The rest of his face was hidden by a black mask.
It was remarkable how perfectly-relaxed G-man Jackson appeared to be. It was even more remarkable how quickly his lax fing-ers snatched up at his under-arm gun. But he was just not quite quick enough.
The cube-headed man was standing exactly in the center of the door behind Jackson. He had not stirred a muscle. But some one else had, and Jackson had never in his life encountered anything like the muscles of the slender hand and arm that shot over his shoulder to seize his gun wrist.
Jackson shook his head, a habit he had when he found himself in a bad spot. Two men had slipped into the room while he had been phoning—the masked man who looked as though he had been constructed with the aid of a steel square, and this slighter person whose body seemed a
curious combination of the irresistible force and the immovable object. No small part of this second intruder’s power lay in the depths of his gray eyes. His eyes didn’t stare; they anchored the G-man’s attention to such an extent that several seconds clicked by before Jackson noticed that the man’s face consisted of something besides eyes.
It took the G-man just a little off balance, that face of the man with the gray eyes. The cheeks looked hollow and pale. The chin receded slightly. The thin lips spoke only with their corners:
“Nix on the roscoe, G-man.”
The black-masked man loomed larger in the nickel shell of the phone. His square-ended fingers went inside the G-man’s coat, produced the gun Jackson would have given a year of his life to reach. Then the gray-eyed one’s grip relaxed, and Jackson turned slowly to face his two unwelcomed visitors.
THE GRAY-EYED man held a gun that closely resembled a heavy automatic. The masked man had carelessly tossed the G-man’s gun aside. There was nothing formidable about the masked intruder except his size, and even that was somehow dwarfed by the cyclonic energy that seemed stored in the lean length of his companion. Having felt the latter’s muscles once, Jackson regarded the man with an infinite amount of respect. Still, he managed a brazen:
“What the hell do you call this?”
“The phone,” the gray-eyed man snagged from the corner of his mouth, “should be so that you could keep an eye on the door. Remember that in the future.”
Jackson worked his lips into a grin. “Consoling to know I’m to have a future.”
The gray-eyed one laughed queerly. “I didn’t say whether the lesson was intended for your use in this world or another one. My guess is that here is where you fade out of the picture.”
The black gun in Gray-eyes’ hand tilted up a little, and Jackson was painfully conscious of its steely stare. Yet those who serve the Department of Justice receive much tempering in the fire of danger. Jackson knew suddenly that he was going to try to jump that gun.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 42